Archive for July 2019
Becoming
We sometimes think our child is deficient because he wants to touch the vase and we have to transform the child into somebody who does not want to touch the vase. But your task is not to teach the child how to be a child—the child already knows how to be a child. You are not teaching your children to be children. You are teaching your children to grow into adults.
This is why, when you are in this showdown across the coffee table, you should look into the future with the eye of faith and see your child standing where you are now standing and their children standing where he is now standing. And how will he know how to deal his son? He will have learned how from you!
If you do not know how to be patient in the face of repeated provocations, your children are not going to know either. When you discipline your children correctly, you are loving your grandchildren. Your job is not to teach them how to be an acceptable child, but to show them how to be a responsible adult—because that is the whole point.
Be honest—you bought the vase at a yard sale last summer and that vase is going to be in another yard sale this coming summer. Who cares about the vase? The child is going to live forever. The child is not something you acquired or are going to get rid of in a yard sale. The vase is. You are not teaching the child to be a good version of what they are. You are rather teaching them to be what they are becoming. . .
This principle does not change. Suppose you are dealing with an obstinate teenager and you are thinking “How to fix the teenager” is your task for the day. Your job is not to fix the teenager. Your task is to model for that teenager how to be a parent. Your teen, in just a few short trips around the sun, is going to have a teenager of her own. You are not training her to be a teenager. She has that down already. You are preparing her for the day when she won’t be. . . .
. . . If I have mastered all the parenting techniques but have not love, I am nothing . . .
Imagine a father and a son in the presence of an unsplit cord of wood. What is the father’s duty? His duty is to take two axes, hand one of them to his son, and to love God and to also love a morning of splitting wood, and to do so alongside his son whom he also loves. That is what godly childrearing is.
Love God, love what you are doing, and love the people God gave you to do it with. Does that remove the need to correct? No, you have to show them how to hold the ax and keep them from swinging it around carelessly. Correction, discipline, teaching, mentoring—all of it must be there because you love Jesus, because you love the wood, and because you love your son. That is what you must do.
Douglas Wilson, Why Children Matter, Chapter 13
See also: Self-control
Singing
Ephesians [5:1] says that God treats us as children. Since Scripture shows how He treats us, we should desire to be like Him in how we treat our children. As He deals with us, so we should deal with our own children. And we see from Zephaniah [3:17] that He rejoices over us.
When Jesus intervened to save us, He did so at great cost to Himself. When He took the loaf of bread that represented His own broken body, He picked it up and gave thanks. As Hebrews 12 says, Jesus did what He did on the cross “for the joy that was set before Him.” . . . God is mighty to save, and He saves with singing.
Now we know from the story of the whole Bible that saving people involves sacrifice, blood, and things being broken. He who knew no sin was made to be sin for us, but He did it with singing. Not only did Jesus give thanks the night He instituted the meal, but afterward they sang a psalm, and then they went out (Matt. 26:30; Mark 14:26). Jesus literally sang as He was preparing to go to the cross.
So, the sacrifices that you will make for your children should be something you can sing over. If there is not a song in it, it is not a biblical sacrifice. Without a song, it is a poor-me, look-at-the-martyr-go sacrifice, and those kinds of sacrifices have a very poor return. You are not just supposed to sing over your children when they are being adorable, asleep in their bed, and you can be at peace with them since they are not misbehaving at the moment. Life is messier than that, and the whole thing—including the mess—should be met with a song. The delight that we are imitating is not an unrealistic delight. This kind of delight takes account of the world as it is, and even so, it rejoices. You sing over your children when you are sacrificing for them, when you are taking the hit for them, and when they have no idea what you are giving up for them.
Douglas Wilson, Why Children Matter, Chapter 3
See also: Singing and slaying
Shapes
If children belong at the table, if we’re to rejoice at the feast of the kingdom with our sons and daughters, then they’ve got to be washed up. If our children belong at the table of the Father, if they participate in the body and blood of the Lord, if they share the holy things as living stones in the temple of the Spirit, then they should also receive the effective sign of baptism.
The role of children in the church divides Baptistic Christians from others. It’s not a minor issue. Whether we baptize babies or not, we’re making a statement about the boundaries of the city of God. And not just a statement: The way we baptize, whom we baptize, shapes the kind of city we are.
Without children, the church is a club for the religiously mature. Without children, the feasts of the church are more restrictive than the feast of old Israel, as if God’s hospitality had, unthinkably, contracted after the coming of the Son and Spirit. Without children, the church cannot be the new humanity that extends as far as the old humanity, from the cradle to the death–bed. Without children, the church is something less than the city of God. Without children, it may be a city under judgment, a city without children laughing in the streets and playing in the squares.
Peter Leithart, The Theopolitan Vision, 39–40
Always
The Lord’s Supper should be part of every Lord’s day liturgy. Worship in the Bible always takes place at a table. An altar is a table (cf. Ezek 41:22), and ever since the flood the people of God have erected altars at places of worship (Gen 8:20; 12:7–8; 33:20; Exod 20:24).
If you could see an ancient Israelite preparing for a feast, you’d see him pick an unblemished animal from his flock or herd, prepare flour or bread, and grab a flagon of wine. If you didn’t know better, you might suspect he’s preparing for a barbecue. Because he is. At the tabernacle and temple, priests offer the Lord’s bread and worshipers share His food (cf. Lev 21–22). Covenant renewal climaxes with a covenant meal, a sign of restored harmony between the parties to the covenant.
Biblically, worship without a meal isn’t worship at all. When we worship without the Supper, it’s as if we’re disciples on the road to Emmaus, who hear Jesus speak but never recognize Him because we don’t stick around for the breaking of bread (Luke 24). A liturgy without the Supper is like a contract without signatures; it is (not just like) a wedding feast without food, a party without hors d’oeuvres and wine, as if the Lord were to open His house to extend hospitality but never offered chips or brought the beer out of the fridge.
Peter Leithart, The Theopolitan Vision, 31
The Dawn Wind
At two o’clock in the morning, if you open your window and listen,
Rudyard Kipling, The Dawn Wind
You will hear the feet of the Wind that is going to call the sun.
And the trees in the shadow rustle and the trees in the moonlight glisten,
And though it is deep, dark night, you feel that the night is done.
. . .
Contentment
You should probably be using the tool that you hate the most. You hate it because you know the most about it.
Dan McKinley
Crossposted to full◦valence.
I gotta have my orange juice. 